


423. read between the lines

by piggy09



Series: The Sestre Daily Drabble Project [160]
Category: Orphan Black (TV)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-07
Updated: 2016-12-07
Packaged: 2018-09-07 02:39:10
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 828
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8779876
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/piggy09/pseuds/piggy09
Summary: Sarah gets put on dish duty after the Bubbles dinner. Helena isn't on dish duty, but she stays behind anyways.





	

Sarah doesn’t know how she got put on dish duty here in the backroom of Bubbles. One second they were all at the table; then she blinked and Cosima was out the door with Delphine, and everyone was packing up, and someone said _oh Sarah you can_ — and before Sarah could say _no, probably not_ she was shoved into the back of the shop. So here she is, standing over a sink that smells terribly of—

“Musk,” says a helpful voice from behind her, and Sarah jumps.

“Shite,” she says, “you scared the hell out of me, meathead.”

“Do not call me this,” Helena says, beaming at the fact that she can follow the pattern. She leans against the wall, bounces off of it a few times with her shoulder, leans on the edge of the sink, stops. She’s still wearing the hat, the VOTE ALISON HENDRIX shirt. She looks approximately twelve years old.

“Well, walk louder next time,” Sarah says. She goes back to scrubbing – oh, hell, this is Helena’s plate. She’s scrubbing crusted sugar off the edge.

“This should be your job,” she mutters. “You ever washed a plate?”

“I tried,” Helena says sadly, “but after the second one broke _sestra_ Alison said no more.” Sarah looks up and Helena is in her space, hovering just by her shoulder. She isn’t looking at Sarah. She’s staring at the plate.

“You can wash this one,” Sarah says. “I’ll keep it a secret.”

Helena makes an amused little snort. “You want me to do your chores for you.”

“Yeah.”

Helena bobs her head in acceptance and obediently takes Sarah’s place. She starts scrubbing at the sugar, making occasional growly little sounds as she fails to get the sugar off. It only takes a moment of looking at Helena for Sarah to realize that she missed her, and that’s a strange and uncomfortable feeling. She goes to lean against the wall and then realizes it was where Helena was leaning, so she stops. “So,” she says.

“So,” Helena echoes obediently.

“How’s – suburbia?”

“Busy,” Helena says. “Much making of soap. Much stopping of bad men.”

“Bad men.”

Helena looks up from the plate with wide, frightened eyes; Sarah can’t stop seeing her as a kid, one who just put a baseball through a window. “Um,” Helena says. She looks back down. “Only – one. Just one bad man. Rudy Scar-face. From the jail.”

“That was _you_ ,” Sarah says slowly. The Hendrixes had said _don’t worry, we can take care of him, you just focus on getting Coady_ , and Sarah had let them. She hadn’t realized it would mean making Helena a knife. Again.

“Yes,” Helena says. “To protect our family.” She holds the plate up, hums satisfaction. Sarah doesn’t tell her there’s still a patch of food-grease near the edge. She can take the blame for it when they’re done; god knows it isn’t the worst mistake she’s made.

In the time she’s spent contemplating that Helena has moved from looking at the plate to looking at Sarah, and her brow is furrowed. “They said I could,” she says.

“No,” Sarah says, and: “yeah,” and: “no, it was – you did great, Helena. Just didn’t realize you were part of the plan, that’s all.”

“I want to help,” Helena says stubbornly. She’s scrubbing the hand towel frantically over the plate – she saw the grease, apparently, even if it was a little later than Sarah did. Might be too late to get it off. Maybe she should’ve just washed it harder.

“I know,” Sarah says.

“I try to wash plates and I break them,” Helena says, “and I try to make soap and I mix the ingredients up, and I try to help _pleminnytsya_ Gemma with her karate competition and I just hurt her and I want – to – help.” She puts the plate down too hard and it cracks a high bright note when it hits the other plates in their pile by the sink. Helena freezes, but it’s fine: none of them are broken.

“Hey,” Sarah says, “that’s good, that you want to help. You’re doin’ fine.”

“I want to find my place,” Helena says, “where I fit.”

“I know,” Sarah says, awkwardly. She doesn’t really. She seeks in the opposite direction from Helena, always has: Sarah wants the next place, and Helena wants the place Sarah left behind to get there.

“You’ll find it,” she says, a band-aid on a stab wound. “Maybe you already have.”

“Maybe,” Helena echoes. She tugs her sleeves down over her hands, pulls at them with her fingertips.

“How ‘bout this,” Sarah says. “Your place can be drying, ‘cause I want to be out of here before the bloody sun rises.”

Helena looks up at her, and swallows, and a smile unfolds across her face in a seasick but sincere sort of way. “Okay,” she says. “Do not break the plates.”

“I won’t if you won’t.”

“Promise,” Helena says, and she goes to take the towel.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading! Please kudos + comment if you enjoyed! :)


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